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Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

economist.com

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Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#41

Post by jackvalentine »

pooper wrote: post #20
noobermin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland has a population of 8.4M, about the population of NYC. US has >300M and a land area two orders of magnitude larger than Switzerland.

> Switzerland has a population of 8.4M, about the population of NYC. US has >300M and a land area two orders of magnitude larger than Switzerland. Can we start with the city? Bill de Blasio (bless his heart) won 282,344 votes in the 2013 Democratic Primary. What's worse is Lhota won his primary with just 32,236 votes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_mayoral_election... I hate to agree with President Obama…

Preferential voting and (and I realise this is pretty much impossible to get implemented if not already so these days....) compulsory voting.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#43

Post by te_chris »

barnacs wrote: post #12
pedrocr wrote: post #4

Paper elections are cheap, reliable and more importantly trustworthy even to people that have no idea what a symmetric key, hash or blockchain even is. But we had to go and screw up by creating extremely insecure voting machines and then come up with crazy schemes like this one to fix them. Do people really think all this complexity is a good thing? Paper elections are very well understood but you can easily come up…

Paper voting doesn't allow for much more citizen involvement than most "democratic" countries have today. You can hold elections every few years, maybe a referendum once or twice a year at most, but any more than that and it becomes inconvenient, inefficient and not so cheap. As a citizen, I want to be more involved. Even in a representative democracy, I want to hold my representatives responsible for their actions.…

So get involved then. Voting is a blunt instrument.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#44

Post by toddkazakov »

badsock wrote: post #6

Looking at the "Voting Machine Security Specifications", it's a verified OS image connecting to a VPN over the internet on election day. This means that you have to trust the: * VPN * OS * Network stack * Display and input drivers (HW and SW) * SSD controller * CPU * CPU's "Management Engine" or equivalent * Mainboard chipset To all be free of exploits and backdoors. You're trusting many, many thousands of people, fr…

You don't even have to trust the software or the hardware. All that is important is votes to be cast as intended and the tally to be correct. End-to-end cryptographically verifiable voting systems achieve that by different means (zero knowledge proofs, etc.) An example is the Pret-a-Voter voting protocol. It uses re-encryption mix nets to provide verifiability (close how Tor works).

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#45

Post by badsock »

toddkazakov wrote: post #44
badsock wrote: post #6

Looking at the "Voting Machine Security Specifications", it's a verified OS image connecting to a VPN over the internet on election day. This means that you have to trust the: * VPN * OS * Network stack * Display and input drivers (HW and SW) * SSD controller * CPU * CPU's "Management Engine" or equivalent * Mainboard chipset To all be free of exploits and backdoors. You're trusting many, many thousands of people, fr…

You don't even have to trust the software or the hardware. All that is important is votes to be cast as intended and the tally to be correct. End-to-end cryptographically verifiable voting systems achieve that by different means (zero knowledge proofs, etc.) An example is the Pret-a-Voter voting protocol. It uses re-encryption mix nets to provide verifiability (close how Tor works).

You absolutely have to trust the software and the hardware.

Modifications at the hardware/OS level can deliberately misrepresent the voter input from the touch panel, and can then alter what is displayed on the screen to match what the voter expects.

No matter how bulletproof the encryption protocol is, it still needs to be fed a choice via an analog, unencrypted channel because human beings are analog and unencrypted. If you control that channel, it's game over.

And you can't get around that by having a system that enables people to verify their vote at a later time on a second (presumably unhacked) machine, because then you'll also enable the forcing of voters to prove that they've voted the way that they've been coerced to.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#46

Post by makomk »

pedrocr wrote: post #4

Paper elections are cheap, reliable and more importantly trustworthy even to people that have no idea what a symmetric key, hash or blockchain even is. But we had to go and screw up by creating extremely insecure voting machines and then come up with crazy schemes like this one to fix them. Do people really think all this complexity is a good thing? Paper elections are very well understood but you can easily come up…

It doesn't matter what election system we have, so long as people are willing to spread and believe questionable claims of vote rigging. For example, there was a claim doing the rounds that Trump won because the GOP systematically purged black voter registrations in the three key swing states in numbers larger than his victory margin - if paper voting was used, that would just be the more prominent claim instead, or conspiracy theories about the paper votes would. (The mechanics of the supposed purge don't work out, none of the organisations monitoring voter suppression saw it, and no-one's been able to find the hundreds of thousands of suppressed voters that would be required - but that doesn't matter. People don't care, and rebuttals don't get the social media spread that shocking allegations do.)

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#47

Post by badsock »

barnacs wrote: post #22
badsock wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some context: Switzerland has votes on issues about four times a year, and they managed to do this with paper, mostly via mail (if someone local knows otherwise, please correct me). Recently they tried out e-voting, with what I consider predictable results: http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/voting-with-a-click_hacking-fear... Also, I agree with ianstormtaylor in that I don't think that what you're proposing would necessari…

> If the same security demands were required when postal voting was introduced in 1990, it would never have been allowed He has a point there. Transportation, heavy machinery, power grids, cruical infrastructure, healthcare, economy and so on all increasingly run computer systems with questionable security. Lives and world order depend on them. Are we really going to draw the line at voting? (edit: expanded on this p…

Yes, we need to draw a line at voting. It's a single event, where a choice that can be encoded in a single byte of pure information has enormous consequences in terms of power allocation.

If you can change that byte across even a small percentage of voting machines, you can leverage that into control of the country's government.

All of the examples you listed are continuously running, auditable, highly heterogeneous systems that can have multiple parties cross-checking because there isn't the absolute need for the actions of the participants to be untraceable back to them, the way it needs to be with voting.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#48

Post by luchs »

badsock wrote: post #45
toddkazakov wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't even have to trust the software or the hardware. All that is important is votes to be cast as intended and the tally to be correct. End-to-end cryptographically verifiable voting systems achieve that by different means (zero knowledge proofs, etc.) An example is the Pret-a-Voter voting protocol. It uses re-encryption mix nets to provide verifiability (close how Tor works).

You absolutely have to trust the software and the hardware. Modifications at the hardware/OS level can deliberately misrepresent the voter input from the touch panel, and can then alter what is displayed on the screen to match what the voter expects. No matter how bulletproof the encryption protocol is, it still needs to be fed a choice via an analog, unencrypted channel because human beings are analog and unencrypte…

You have to trust some hardware, but not necessarily the full stack you listed above.

For example, chipTAN is commonly used in Germany to verify online banking. You have to trust the chip on the banking card and the card reader, but not your computer, network connection, or your smartphone.

A similar device may also work for online voting. The hardware would be simple enough to audit it. Your computer would never learn the vote.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#49

Post by kalleboo »

noobermin wrote: post #17
badsock wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some context: Switzerland has votes on issues about four times a year, and they managed to do this with paper, mostly via mail (if someone local knows otherwise, please correct me). Recently they tried out e-voting, with what I consider predictable results: http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/voting-with-a-click_hacking-fear... Also, I agree with ianstormtaylor in that I don't think that what you're proposing would necessari…

Switzerland has a population of 8.4M, about the population of NYC. US has >300M and a land area two orders of magnitude larger than Switzerland.

Maybe they should try splitting the US into smaller, self-governed districts. Maybe call them "states"?

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#50

Post by kennydude »

badsock wrote: post #45
toddkazakov wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't even have to trust the software or the hardware. All that is important is votes to be cast as intended and the tally to be correct. End-to-end cryptographically verifiable voting systems achieve that by different means (zero knowledge proofs, etc.) An example is the Pret-a-Voter voting protocol. It uses re-encryption mix nets to provide verifiability (close how Tor works).

You absolutely have to trust the software and the hardware. Modifications at the hardware/OS level can deliberately misrepresent the voter input from the touch panel, and can then alter what is displayed on the screen to match what the voter expects. No matter how bulletproof the encryption protocol is, it still needs to be fed a choice via an analog, unencrypted channel because human beings are analog and unencrypte…

Yup, or you get something like this -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV_c1-YTk8M
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